


You Know Me

by Violsva



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Body Dysphoria About Someone Else's Body, Bucky Barnes Has Issues, Captain America: The First Avenger, Gen, Missing Scene, The Unheimlich, Uncanny Valley, Watching Someone Sleep, or more accurately
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-24
Updated: 2018-01-24
Packaged: 2019-03-09 02:38:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 745
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13471917
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Violsva/pseuds/Violsva
Summary: In a tent in occupied territory, Bucky tries to adjust.





	You Know Me

What with the medics, and Army procedures, and going up to England, and the way everyone fawns over Steve now even when they’re also pissed off at him, Bucky hasn’t once slept in the same room with Steve since he showed up in Europe. It felt weird. Like Steve wasn’t really here.

After all, for ages, before he got drafted, they only had the one bedroom. In the first apartment, his apartment, and then the second, shitty, one, and then the third one that was all right, that they’d managed to keep, there’d always been one bedroom, two cots (once he’d managed to actually get Steve a bed in the first place). And even before that he’d ended up watching Steve sleep pretty regularly, when he was sick. There are good memories too, of sleepovers and talking for hours until someone’s mother banged on the wall and they tried to whisper instead, but mostly, usually, Steve was sick, and Bucky was watching over him, so that Mrs. Rogers would know that someone was. Even if there wasn’t much that anyone could do.

And then he’d shipped off, and slept surrounded by other guys. And then—

Well, _now_ he’s in a tent, with Steve asleep next to him, and vague grey from outside the only light. But he can see Steve okay anyway. It just doesn’t really look like Steve.

Obviously it _is_ Steve, he’d known that even in—the Hydra base. His voice is the same, his stupid self-sacrificing personality is exactly the same, his face is ... mostly the same. It’s not that he doubts that it’s Steve.

It just ... doesn’t look like him.

Steve’s happy about it, any idiot can see that. Steve’s thrilled, and comfortable, the way he never seemed to be before. That’s good.

Bucky’d asked anyone who might know, the doctors, Agent Carter, Stark, and they’d pretended that this was some top secret shit as if Bucky didn’t have eyes, but he’d managed to get them to admit that Steve was in perfect health, that whatever they’d done to him didn’t seem to have any negative effects. Which means that for the first time ever, he can be pretty sure that Steve’s not—that Steve is healthy, absolutely healthy. That’s good too.

Of course, there’s a war on, which might render the question of Steve’s health absolutely moot. (Maybe. Bucky has no fucking idea what they did to him. Is he bulletproof now? He sure acts like it.)

But there’s nothing bad about Steve being like this. Bucky’s just not used to it.

So he lies there propped up on an elbow, listening to Steve’s breathing, calm and steady like it never used to be, and looking at that face, the cheeks filled out and broadened slightly but still, basically, the same face, and trying to _get_ used to it. Steve doesn’t fit too well in the tent, now, so he’s curled up on his side the same way he used to, but now his shoulders look like a wall and his arms are huge. His hands too, which are pretty close to Bucky’s face, one of them clutching the thin blanket. He always used to do that too.

It’s _so fucking weird_.

It could be worse, Bucky tells himself, thinking of that—freak, monster, madman, whatever the hell he was—from Hydra. _That_ was creepy, right out of Lovecraft. This shouldn’t be. This is just Steve, only ... more of him.

He wonders what it felt like. Steve—thankfully not giving a shit about confidentiality—had said it was just the one procedure, over with quickly and all happening inside some kind of machine. Nothing like...

Bucky has no fucking clue what Hydra thought they were doing to _him_ , but Steve at least apparently didn’t have to suffer through anything like that. Good.

Bucky realizes he’s reaching for Steve, and he stops himself although Steve has always slept like a log, when he wasn’t waking himself coughing. Then he makes himself keep going, smooths back the hair on Steve’s forehead that doesn’t need to be smoothed. That feels the same, at least.

Bucky lowers himself off his elbow, back to lying down, still kind of staring at Steve. Which is fine. He doesn’t expect to sleep much tonight—hardly ever sleeps much these days, and now they’re in the middle of nowhere with possible Germans any moment, so he might as well use the time to get used to Steve’s face.


End file.
